Danie Ware - Ecko Rising

“You shouldn’t be here, you great lunk.” Penya spoke softly and with a long affection. She jabbed him with a conspiratorial elbow. “How the rhez did you get yourself arrested?”

“Carelessness.” He shrugged. “I needed to tell you to your face, Pen. You’ve been a good friend, never betrayed me – I don’t want to see this madness infect you. That – and I need to ask you something.”

She chuckled. The slant of sunlight was obscured by the grey and the theatre’s glow vanished back into the hillside.

“You didn’t come for a last fix, then?”

“I came to say goodbye, you daft old whytche .”

“Now there’s a word you don’t hear any more.” Wheeling seabirds cried raucous laughter. “Facing the cold embrace of withdrawal, are we? I can make it easier for you, if that’d help.”

The first splatters of rain began to hit his cheek.

“For the Gods’ sakes, Pen, I know what I look like but comedown? The least of my problems.” The harbour wind was sharp, it blew the rain into his face. He lowered his voice to a rumble. “Elemental fires, roving monsters, and that’s only the beginning. You should... retire for a while. Things are about to get nasty.”

“I can take care of myself. You taught me how, as I remember.” Penya eyed a scattering of bored local toughs, loitering in a chipped stone doorway. Litter blew round their feet. Their eyes raked her like broken-off blades, but her hand rested pointedly on the long knife at her belt and they shuffled back. She shot him a look round the side of her cheek. “You took a chance coming here.”

“They’ll never notice me.” Rhan grinned, took a minute approximation of a bow. “Trick of the light.”

She chuckled, threw him a brief smile. Next to her grey hair and assured walk, he was slight and twitchy, hollow eyed and sallow skinned – carefully unremarkable. If Phylos’s eyes were here, they’d pass straight over him.

“Walk with me,” she said. “Round here, walls have bigger ears than you’d think.”

The wind cut harsh as they turned from the waterfront and began to move out along the grey-stone harbour wall, blinking at rain and spray. Hands had built this, bare hands. Sweat and effort had carried these stones and piled them high from the water... Now, algae and shellfish grew in their cracks.

The tide pulled at them, hissing.

The elements awaken. Remembering Roderick’s passionate speech, the cut of the chill brought Rhan a shiver of insight. Ten generations of Fhaveon’s Lords, the might and vision of Saluvarith, now distilled down to Demisarr’s weakness. Demi was a good man, and a true-hearted one, but Phylos would rip out his belly, garnish it, and serve it up at a Cartel party.

“It got away from me, Pen. I wasn’t paying enough damned attention and now I have to fix it. All of it. The Bard’s heart holds a fear that’s crazing him – and this time his madness is catching.” Anger flickered like light under his skin. “You’re the finest herbalist I know – and I need you to do something for me.” He looked back up at the hills that cupped the town, almost as if he expected to see flames spreading through the green. “Call it a suspicion, a feeling. I need to know if there’s anything wrong with the grass.”

“The moons on two sticks.” Penya snorted. Below them, a boatman stood in the bottom of a small, local craft, picking spindly-legged crustaceans from a woven cage. He held them up, shook them, dropped the bigger ones into a basket, threw the smaller ones back into the harbour. “Y’know,” she said, pausing to watch, “some of those creatures are hundreds of returns old. Hundreds.” The boatman dropped another one. “They end their lives in that tar-stinky little boat – and we eat them.”

Rhan stopped beside her, skin prickling, rain in his eyes. The clouds were sinking lower overhead. Hundreds. “Pen?”

“Why are you here, Rhan? Really? She rounded on him, punched him to hide an odd note in her voice. “You’ve been arrested! I should throw you in the harbour!”

“Maybe he’ll pick me up and put me in his basket. Penya –” now he turned her to look at him, searching her face “– what’s the matter?”

“Nothing.” With a flicker of more usual, impish humour, she took his jaw in her hands and kissed him on the mouth. “Come on, you – bet I can still beat you.” She broke into a run, turned to grin at him, jogging backwards with strands of her hair blowing. She was still slender, a woman he’d watched grow from a fearful girl, into a lover, into a friend. “Come on, you timeless bastard, see if you can keep up!”

He chuckled, broke into a shambling run suited to his wasted appearance.

She taunted him. “Come on !”

He shambled faster.

Under his roughly sandaled feet, the wall ran to a long, embracing curve, protecting the harbour and ending in its tall, stone guardian, a statue with features long since blunted by coastal weather. He stood faceless, twin to the lighthouse, sombre and dark, the other side of the harbour mouth.

Defended by the guardian’s plinth was a square cot, built like the wall out of shaped and carried rocks. Once, boats not wishing or needing to moor in the harbour had done trade here.

Now it was half tumbledown. No one had used it in returns.

Her laughter was snatched by the wind, thrown in his face.

Hundreds.

And the realisation hit him like a clothyard shaft.

Oh, Pen, you didn’t...

The thought was sharp and sudden, hurting – but his certainty was absolute. Rhan lurched to a stop, his heart slowly crushing in a fist of pure, cold betrayal.

Hundreds.

“Pen?” It was a whisper, a plea of denial.

“Come on !” She was still laughing at him, her hair now coming loose from its tail. He hadn’t really noticed how grey she’d gone – the death of her husband had hit her harder than she’d said. She was always so damned capable...

“Penya?”

Loss twined its way round denial, round helplessness and then round rising, righteous anger. Almost answering him, the sun broke momentarily through the clouds and lit the harbour to a brilliant blue sparkle, though the rain still scattered in his face. Shards of rainbow danced in the air.

Hundreds.

Warmth touched his skin. He raised his jaw, his determination.

His rage.

Friends were rare to an immortal, to be betrayed by one was beyond belief.

Focus!

He knew they were coming and he let the light flood him, find the core of his anger, his certainty, and fuse with it, fuel it. Bright illumination saturated his being, burned like sheet lightning beneath his skin. He opened his heart, his mind, his soul. Around him, the very Powerflux invaded his form, wove itself into his breath, his being, and he was more than flesh, more than mortal. He was pure bloody quintessence – and, by the Gods, he was angry.

Rhan started to laugh; release, rising exultation. Defiance.

Come on then, you bloody bastards. Ambush me, would you?

With a massive effort of self-control, he contained the force, held the light beneath his skin and clung to his sunken-eyed image – but he wouldn’t keep it for long. The illusion was burning from a hole in its centre – as though the sunlight had hit it, focused through a real glass lens.

His laugh sought utterance, gleeful and dangerous. It had been too, too long.

Come on then, show yourselves. I’ll crush your skulls with my bare hands.

He forced his body to move, closer to the wall’s end. He was still lurching, though it was no longer an act. Controlling his body was awkward – he wanted to blaze, to explode into the sky like a rising star.